Streaming Bitrate Calculator

Match the video bitrate to your target quality: about 4,000 kbps for 720p30, 6,000 kbps for 720p60, 10,000 kbps for 1080p30 and 12,000 kbps for 1080p60. Then cap it at your strictest destination, since Twitch's standard ingest tops out at 6,000 kbps. Use CBR rate control, a 2 second keyframe interval and 128 kbps AAC audio. The calculator prints these numbers for your exact setup.

Yes, for one feed at up to 6,000 kbps video. That covers 720p60 anywhere, or 1080p60 at Twitch's standard 6,000 kbps cap. With 128 kbps audio and a 50% safety margin that needs about 9.2 Mbps. A full 12,000 kbps 1080p60 feed for YouTube needs about 18.2 Mbps. To reach several platforms on 10 Mbps, use a cloud multistreaming service so only one feed leaves your connection.

Twitch's standard H.264 ingest caps video at 6,000 kbps. With 128 kbps audio and the recommended 50% headroom, plan for roughly 9.2 Mbps of steady upload. Eligible channels can turn on Enhanced Broadcasting in their streaming software for higher limits, but the standard path is the safe baseline.

Only if your encoder sends each copy itself. Three destinations then means three full feeds, roughly triple the upload. A cloud multistreaming service takes one feed from you and sends the copies from its servers, so your upload stays the same however many destinations you add.

Measure my upload sends test data from your browser to Cloudflare's public speed test servers for about 10 seconds, one upload at a time, and reports the typical speed of the longer uploads. A stream in OBS also travels over one connection, so this is closer to what a stream gets than a speed test that opens many connections at once. Run it on the machine and network you stream from.

Roughly 0.45 GB per hour for every 1 Mbps of stream. A Twitch-capped 1080p60 feed at 6.13 Mbps uploads about 2.8 GB per hour, and a full 12,000 kbps 1080p60 feed about 5.5 GB per hour. Multiply by the number of feeds if your computer sends each copy itself.

Use wired ethernet whenever you can. Live streams need a steady upload, and Wi-Fi adds jitter and packet loss that show up as dropped frames even when a speed test looks fast. If you must use Wi-Fi, pick the Extra safe headroom in the calculator and test from the streaming machine itself.